


Fire and Moonlight

by greyvvardenfell



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 12:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10854372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/greyvvardenfell
Summary: He hadn’t expected this, and neither had she.---(Written for DAO Appreciation Week on Tumblr, celebrating my favorite non-Warden ship)





	Fire and Moonlight

He hadn’t expected this, and neither had she. 

It had been many months since they met, since he walked into the tavern in Lothering and she defended him against the blades of Loghain’s soldiers. She hadn’t known then, and neither had he.

Over the many days they spent walking the roads of Ferelden together, they talked. Though he hadn’t liked it, he told her about the time he spent in the Chantry, training to become a templar. She laughed at his jokes and his youthful smile warmed the heart she thought she had lost to her bard past. In some ways, he seemed much older than his twenty years, and in others, so much younger. She didn’t know what to think of him, if she could trust him with the weight of her secret life, but she wanted to.

They found themselves on the same watch one night, the night of a full moon in early summer. Their camp was near a fresh spring, and the gentle babbling of the brook that flowed out of it played in their ears as they sat together at the fire. “You are so funny, Alistair,” she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand out of a habit born from her time in the Orlesian courts. “I do not know how you think of these things so quickly.”

“Well, I’m not so stupid as _some_ people would have you believe, naming no apostate Witches of the Wilds.”

Her smile fell away. “I do not think you are stupid,” she said quietly. “Do you think it of yourself?”

His laugh died in his throat. “Sometimes,” he confessed, not looking at her. “Hearing it all the time almost makes me believe it.”

“You must not listen to Morrigan. She is… troubled, I think. She knows many things, but is so ignorant in other ways. She is not kind, or forgiving, and with what you’ve been through, you could use both.”

They were edging towards dangerous territory now. Feelings. “What I’ve been through,” he repeated slowly. “It doesn’t seem like I should be dwelling on it now, not with all we still have to do. I mean, Reyja —”

She interrupted him. “She did not know the other Wardens as you did. And even if she had, her pain would not diminish your own. You need to grieve, Alistair. We all do.”

He grimaced, looking away from her into the crackling flames. “He always said this might happen. Duncan, I mean. He told me once that he wouldn’t be around all that much longer. But I didn’t even get to thank him, tell him, well, anything.”

She scooted closer to him, started to reach for his hand but stopped herself. Not yet. “I’m sure he knew.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He sounded sad, his brows knitted over his wide brown eyes. “He did so much for me. He saved me. And I never even thanked him for it.”

“You thanked him by following his orders, by carrying on as a Grey Warden,” she said. “He knew.”

“I still would have liked to say it. You know, for all the talking I do, sometimes I feel like I never actually say anything.”

She chuckled and he felt his skin heat up. It had nothing to do with the proximity of the fire. “I know what you mean,” she said. And she did.

They sat in silence then, as the moment grew distant, watching the fire consume the logs they fed it and the moon track a path across the night sky. Fire and moonlight. Both of them felt a tenuous thread stretch between them, woven with their mingled breaths and heartbeats. He started to speak several times, but the words wouldn’t pass his lips. Eventually, she stretched, made to stand, and that broke the seal.

“Wait,” he said, too quickly. “Where are you going?”

She blinked. “We are on watch, are we not? I was just going to patrol the camp.”

He blushed, grateful for the flashing shadows that hid it. “Oh. Right. Well, um, good luck then, with that.”

She raised a delicate eyebrow. “Good luck? Do you expect trouble?”

He let out a shaky laugh. “A-ha, no. Of course not. There hasn’t been ‘trouble’ all night, has there?”

“Right,” she said, eyeing him. “Well, I won’t be long. Unless you want to join me?”

“J-join you? No, I think you can handle, um. I think you’ve got it.”

“You are doing it again.”

“Doing? Doing what?”

“Talking and not saying anything,” she said with laughter in her voice. 

“Oh. Right. Um, sorry. About that.”

“There is no need to apologize, Alistair. But if you have something to say to me, you should just say it!” She was baiting him, giving him a chance to take the first step along the tightrope thread between them. She was more than willing to meet him halfway across.

“Just, um. Hurry back?”

“Is that a question?”

“No. Hurry back.”

Disappointing. “I will.”

She hadn’t taken more than a few steps out of the ring of firelight and into the realm of the light of the moon before he stood up and followed her. “Leliana, wait. I do have something to say. I just…”

“Yes?”

He bit his lip, but only for a moment. Then he kissed her. She smiled against the roughness of his stubbled cheek and kissed him back. She hadn’t expected him to be quite so bold. Neither had he. 

The moonlight shining down from behind her lit his eyes with circles of silver. The firelight twisting from behind him danced in the strands of her short red hair. A templar and a lay sister. A Grey Warden and a bard. Fire and moonlight.


End file.
